Over medicated?

[Maria]

I just have to write this because I'm so pleased and didn't think I could do it tho am glad to find out I could~ it's my 4th day on 900mg of Neurontin/day vs. 1800mg/day. No wonder I had brain fog and felt euphoric!

So far.. no neuropathies! Wow!!!!! I'm really so happy about this! I will try to make the switch to Lyrica next week after I go to my stepson's baby's christening and my aunt's funeral. Am afraid to take too many drug related change chances.

Mark, thanks again for your part in me getting here~ you are truly a spine patient's advocate!

Unless things drastically change for me this will be my last entry here however I took only 600mg of Neurontin yesterday and felt fine/feel fine today while on carrying on with my usual daily activities which included being out and about most of day and walking the dog multiple times daily some walks longer than other.

So far so good and am really so pleasantly surprised at my own body and my mind feels much clearer on so much less dosage of Neurontin. Still haven't switched to Lyrica yet.

[mmglobal]

Maria, I'm so glad that you are making progress. This will be an interesting switch. So many of us are on Neurontin. So many of the doctors have a bias towards one or the other. This class of drugs seems to be kind of like AD's... it's hit and miss. Some work for this percentage, but not for the rest, and there is no explaining why. In the past, Topomax was the up and comer that was going to replace Neurontin. I did not get the benefit from Topomax and switched back to Neurontin. I haven't taken any of these since my first ADR surgery in 2002! I'm so glad to have left them behind, but if I had more nerve pain, I'd tolerate the side-effects in order to get the relief.

All the best,

Mark

[Maria]

Mark,
I felt the same way for the longest time re avoiding neuropathies vs. a clearer mind w/intolerable nerve pain.

This is like what happened when I was taking Elavil for neuropathies in a way. I was started at 50mg/day and I ended up weaning down to a 10mg dose once/week because I was so stuporous/sleepy at work in the afternoon.

With the Neurontin I felt like my mind was actually scrambled for periods of several hours to half a day on a more regular basis.

Perhaps there were synergistic effects of Neurontin and Methadone at a later point in the last 12 years tho it seems more like when the nerve pain seems to have dropped enough then the level of medication was "too high." Or nerves were just not so aggravated because L5S1 fused/no leaking of nasty stuff on nerves?

I don't know if I even need 600 mg/day and I may try decreasing it again by half or so though I'm able to be quite functional at this dose w/o neuropathies and a much clearer mind.

I was reading on a site that Allan listed on another forum about the potential synergistic effect of Topamax and Methadone and I was prescribed it once for neuropathies which I didn't get to reach a max dose as just being off the Neurontin one day ruined my 2004 4th of July weekend at Dog Beach/Ocean Beach! The pain was so crippling.

More recently I was prescribed Topamax for migraines to get off Fioricet but I find that I get less migraines than I used to so need for either drug isn't really "up there" so not taking the T and still prn'ing the Fioricet as it works well for my migraines when they occur.

Now if I could just get off the Methadone and have my innards function w/o lots o' lax~ I'd be a real happy camper.

Will see what the future holds. Thanks again